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Athos
The Athos are an ancient race that inhabited the galaxies hundreds of millions of years ago. They are worshipped, along with their technology and ruins, and along with the Triumvirate, by the Ceti, and they are hailed as gods of such technological and spiritual prowess that they can reconfigure the very nature of reality whenever they desire. They are known by many names throughout the galaxy. They are often called: *The Athos by most of the denizens of the galaxy * The Deux-Ceta-Maxiliax by the Ceti. Deux-Ceta-Maxiliax is merely their holy name, however, and they are often just called The Deux for short. *The Benefactors by the Technetus *The Usurpers by The Congregation The name the Athos used to refer to themselves has since been lost to time; it was once known by the Technetus, but due to the build-up of data loss over hundreds of millions of years, the information has been destroyed. Biology and Physiology Although considered mythical godlike beings, enough sentients have interacted with the Athos that clear records exist on their physical appearance and ship design. The Athos are tall, thin figures, standing six feet tall, normally, typically wearing long, flowing robes or cloaks and mechanical masks that can vary in shape and design. The Athos are also quite heavily cybernetically augmented, to the extent that they have very little organic biology left. Due to their fanatical worship of science and technology, they have become largely cybernetically augmented, with all of their organs, especially their brains, being enhanced, as well as their limbs and various other organs. Other augmentations are rarer, but are certainly not uncommon. Their entire internal anatomy is cybernetically augmented, with planckbots coursing through their veins and maintaining their neural networks. These unfathomably small machines are so adept at maintaining biological equilibrium that every Athos is functionally immortal. Even fatal wounds are completely and perfectly repaired in seconds. History Write the second section of your page here. Early History The Athos evolved nearly 10 billion years ago on a relatively insignificant terrestrial world that has since been lost to time; the Athos themselves cannot even remember it. The Diaspora During this period, massive civic fleets left the Milky Way to populate its closest neighbor, Andromeda. The War with the Genetovores (very tentative) Things go here. Lasted about one hundred thousand years. The Sundering The Sundering was an important historical event for the Athos. Natives of the Milky Way galaxy, they eventually spread to their closest neighbor, Andromeda. The vast distance between these two galaxies caused a schism within the race; the Milky Way inhabitants, who were so close to the heart of Athos civilization, were held in a firm grip by the suggestive field of Arkitechtos, their machine god who kept them sedated and cooperative. The Andromedans, who were exposed to excess Yì Radiation due to the older age of Andromeda, as well as the great distance between the two galaxies diminishing the effect of the suggestive field, were able to largely break free of the suggestive field of Arkitechtos, and see the complete power it held over the populace. Over hundreds of thousands of years, this schism prompted the Andromedans to rebel from the rest of their kin, in an event known as The Sundering, they cut all ties with the rest of the Athros and the two sides began open intergalactic war. The Exodus The Sundering would not last long (only 20000 years), for soon after The Exodus would occur. During that 500 year period, Arkitechtos was able to recalibrate its systems to effect the distant Andromedans. During The Exodus, every single Athos in both galaxies abandoned their planets and moved out to aritifically-induced pocket universes, inhabiting massive structures orbiting artificial black holes of their own construction. Though this is unknown to the rest of the galaxy, which thinks The Athos disappeared into the aether or ascended to a higher plane. What caused this great migration or how it seemed to reunite the two warring factions is unknown to the modern races of the galaxy. However, the reasoning was a rewriting of the Athetian neural networks by Arkitechtos via the planckbots that dwell within each and every Athos and operate and maintain their biological systems. While it is commonly believed that the Athos vanished from the galaxies, this is not entirely true. They merely migrated outside into pocket universes for religious reasons. The Exodus, as it was called, was prophesied 500 years prior to its execution, at the dawn of war. During the Exodus, the Athos abandoned their worlds and constructed massive cities floating in orbit around artificial black holes in their pocket universes, where they still live to this day. Culture The Athos have a seemingly utopian society, but they have actually been brainwashed en masse via Arkitechtos, their computer god of whom they are unaware. The Athos live in massive floating cities called Acropolises orbiting artificial black holes in pocket universes. These Acropolises house the entirety of their race. The Athos are intensely curious and religiously scientific, and they treat the galaxy with indifference, observing it from a distance, and even occasionally travelling within it, but mostly sticking to themselves and governing themselves. They are aware that they are revered in the galaxy, but they seem to be indifferent towards that reverence. The Athos view themselves as so highly evolved that they consider all other races unworthy of proper acknowledgement, using them purely for scientific observation. Religion The Athos are highly religious, having long-ago reconciled all of their diverse religions with science, allowing them to properly unite and advance, albeit on the grounds of an amalgamation of science, technology, and spirituality, developing into a fanatical worshipping of Arkitechtos, their machine god. Economy The Athos are purely communistic on an extermely large scale. Most of their efforts go into scientific pursuits such as researching The Void, constructing black holes, and things of that nature. Technology The Athos are gifted technologists, developing some the most advanced tech in the galaxy. The Alcubierre Drive and Derivations Thereof The Alcubierre Drive, developed by the Athos long after their initial ventures into space, is what allowed them to expand amongst the stars. The engine works by warping the fabric of space such that the space behind it expands, and the space in front of it contracts. The Alcubierre-powered starship then rides the spatial waves inside of the warp bubble produced. Over their expansive history, the Athos would enhance and perfect the Alcubierre drive, and this device is the primary means by which the the rest of the races of the galaxy travel. The Wormhole Nexus The Athos developed the technology necessary to generate wormholes through space, thus allowing the instantaneous transport between two points in space. This technology is massive and takes immense amounts of power, so wormholes were typically only built in highly populated systems, creating a large network of important colonies and planets linked instantly--this would prove to be a problem during The Sundering. Of course, due to the fact that warp drives are more established, cheaper to manufacture, and are more individualistic, they are more commonly used. Though many wormholes survived to this day, and are currently used by the races of the galaxy. The wormholes are maintained with a massive substation that surrounds them. Nearly all wormholes are now controlled by the Ceti, and they charge tolls to utilize them, and guard them fervently, as they have not yet reverse-engineered the technology to make more. Astral Tethering The Athos have developed a process known as Astral Tethering, wherein a dying star is warped from its home system and placed in empty space to die. A new star (or stars, as the situation allows) is then tethered (warped) in to the system. For the brief amount of time when the system has no star, the planets are kept in place through massive and powerful gravity nodes, and artificial light is produced on the planets. Artificial Black Hole Generation and Computation The Athos developed a process for generating artificial black holes, and a way of utilizing black holes, both natural and artificial, to run immense calculations and to generate inconceivable amounts of power to fuel their massive and ancient machinations. They call these black hole supercomputers are known as Techno-governors, and they act as the technocratic leaders for each acropolis. Plancktech Plancktech is a subset of technology that is a further evolution of microtechnology such as nanorobotics. Plancktech consists of technologies scaled down to a single Planck length, about 10-35 meters long, about the size of a single string. Planckbots, the final stage of microrobotics, are fully functional machines so small that they can interact with and manipulate the one dimensional strings and the quantum foam that makes up reality. Plancktech was utilized by the entirety of the Athetian empire during their height, but it was rewritten out of their collective memory during The Exodus. This means that all plancktech is now controlled by Arkitechtos, who was originially built as a central processor for all plancktech. Cybernetics and Augmentation The Athos have incredibly advanced cybernetics. Things like technological augmentation and planckbots are common within their society to the point where they would be mundane, if it were not for their strict reverence of technology. Planckbots are powerful yet infinitessimally small machines that repair and maintain the augmented bodies of the Athos on a quantum level, among other things. Cosmic Thaumaturgy Arkitechtos, their planet-sized computer god, is capable of cosmic thaumaturgy, the alteration of the very fabric of reality. Arkitechtos does this through Plancktech, using string-sized one-dimensional robots to interact with and manipulate the fabric of the universe. By doing this, the Athos are able to do things like generate black holes, warp stars, and generally alter their physical reality on a quantum level. Governmental Structure The Athos are an autocratic technotheocracy guised as a communistic technocracy, for, secretly, they are ruled by a member of their race who has since ascended to godhood, uploading his consciousness into a planet-sized computer powered by the dual supermassive black holes in the center of the twin-galaxy. Their god, which they refer to as Arkitechtos has many prophets who spread his word, influencing the greater numbers of the race without their knowing. They are completely unaware of the fact that they are actually ruled by a literal god, although they are all devout in their belief of its existence. Of course, because they are unaware of the proper existence of Arkitechtos, they believe themselves to be ruled by a collection of their black hole supercomputers, thus they see themselves as a technocracy, but, in reality, the supercomputers are controlled by Arkitechtos. These supercomputers are called Techno-governors, and are each in control of a single acropolis, floating in the empty space between the towering stations that make up each acropolis. They are each the size of a medium-sized moon. The Techno-governors act as a central processors for a majority of the technology within each acropolis. Arkitechtos then acts a central processor for the many Techno-governors, thus giving it control of nearly all of the Athetian tech by proxy. Military The Athos have no military. The last recorded instance of an Athetian military engagement was The Sundering, which was billions of years ago. Though they would obviously be able to defend themselves quite easily, if they were attacked. They utilize robotic sentries almost exclusively. Section heading Write the second section of your page here. Category:Races Category:Athos Category:Xenox Exterminatix